Baul

“… Albert Grossman- Bob Dylan's ex-manager invited me to the US to sing at a music festival in San Francisco. I toured the US singing at other music festivals and thereafter Grossman took me to Bearsville, Bob Dylan's hometown. Bearsville was situated in the township of Woodstock. Known world wide as the quintessential New England Village, Woodstock is a pretty tiny town and the Western pilgrimage for music lovers and artists. It's a desolate town in the downtown area you'll find quaint shops and galleries with spiral staircases. It's a unique experience to explore its alleys and hidden side streets. Its countryside is full of surprises with cosy farms, mysterious inns and hospitable country stores.

Bearsville gets its name from the bears, which were on the prowl there to eat apples from its orchards and grapes from vineyards. Thankfully I never came face to face with a bear. I would love to see deer rolling on the grass bed carpeted with apples. Rabbits would scurry about and birds would chirp all day.  When I was working with Bob Dylan I lived in a wooden house with an adjoining swimming pool in the hilly woods in Bearsville. Dylan was a very friendly young man. On coming to know that we could only eat rice he had sent over sacks full of rice to our home and said that we weren't allowed to leave until we had consumed all of it. Dylan loved Indian dishes. In fact he would often come over and taste my wife's khichri. She would add apples instead of potatoes as the fruit grew in abundance there.

The recording studio of Bearsville looked like a castle in the woods. It was an ideal fairy tale setting. My guesthouse was situated very close to the music studio. I could work at the studio whenever I wanted to and if I was not in the mood of composing music I could come home. I remember Dylan traversing the countryside on horseback and strumming his guitar seated on a barrel. I fondly recollect all the jamming sessions with him. Before long we recorded albums together. Dylan would call himself the 'baul of America'. He pointed out to me that he wore patchwork jeans very much like my pied guduri and we both sang songs celebrating humanity- so where did the difference lie?

Meeting Mick Jagger in Nice, France was an equally stimulating experience. It was the hippie age when I toured France. Nice is a city with great scenic beauty. Green pine forests fringe the deep blue shores of the Mediterranean and the landscape soon ascends into a rocky and hilly terrain. The museums of Nice and its intellectual ambience have attracted artists, painters, writers, sculptors and musicians.

Mick Jagger's manager had invited me to work at the Rolling Stones studio in Nice. Ironically I had no idea who Mick Jagger was at that time though his music company had invited me. The Rolling Stones building was on the seashore was of palatial grandeur. It resembled the Victoria Memorial and had a beautiful glass ceiling from which sunlight poured in. I would spend hours gazing at the crystal blue waters of the Mediterranean and the amazing aquatic life down below. The recording studio was underground completely cut off from any external sound.

When I first saw Mick Jagger he was on the seashore dancing to my music with the agility of a snake and then started strumming his guitar.  I was slightly far off singing, but we could see one another. Not knowing who he really was I told his manager that his dance was distracting me. His manager simply politely requested me to turn away from him and sing. 

To my surprise soon I got a dinner invitation from Mick Jagger. He was driving like crazy while taking us up the hill to his home. He had turned an old castle to his home set amidst grape vines. Rolls Royce and sports cars were parked in front of his house.  I was his special guest. Mick Jagger was then married to Bianca, a daughter was born to them, he specially requested me to bless and name his daughter, as I was a spiritual person from India.  I named his daughter Krishna.  Jagger treated us to a lavish banquet. Chubby, colorful pet cats roamed about in his house. Mick Jagger was a motorbike racer - had many bikes and a helicopter. He fast became friends with the youngest son who was a child at that time and showered him with gifts.  I recorded the album Jai Bangla with him.

I had taken just one picture with Jagger and when I got it developed at a studio in London, the person at the counter asked me how I had got to know him.  I said both of us were artists.  Right then the television in the studio started beaming Mick Jagger coming out of his home and travelling to the airport.  "This is Mick Jagger, one of the greatest musicians of the world."

I have toured many countries.  All my air tickets will form a huge pile.  Bauls are wanderers who can never stay at one place for a long time.  Every country of the world is my home.  Every country I have been to has been of special significance to me starting from Japan - the land of the rising sun to the far West.  I can visit the same country many times and every time I'll be enchanted by something refreshingly new.  I am also proud to be a cultural ambassador of India.  It was a great honor to me to sing at the Tennessee Folk Festival.  I have a Baul Academy in San Diego now and have to travel there often.  It's nice when foreigners come forward to touch my feet at airports saying they have been overwhelmed by my music. 

It has also been a pleasure travelling with my family; two of my sons are settled in Mumbai and Paris, so I visit those cities regularly.  My wife has accompanied me on most of my travels, she is a musician too, and both of us have many memorable travel memories. Santiniketan is a favorite travel destination of mine because it is so close to Kolkata and I have formed a Baul Society there.  It is true that urbanization is gradually creeping into Santiniketan - there are more streets, Internet cafes and high rises. Yet, it still has peace, sanctity and cultural ambience. 

Though I have a house at Dhakuria in Kolkata, I have no fixed address whatsoever. I am still a wanderer at 74 years of age. I'd like to share with you a few lines of my favorite baul song:

“Our body is like a vehicle always travelling fueled by water and wind. From dust we have come and after our travels are over we will return to dust.”

~  Purna Das Baul Samrat, (born 1933) is an Indian musician and singer, in Baul tradition. He has worked with artists such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Mahalia Jackson, Peter Paul & Mary, Allen Ginsberg, Gordon Lightfoot, Bob Marley, The Band, Peter Gabriel and others. Purna Das has participated in many storytelling festivals, and has given workshops at numerous universities around the world. Purna Das is author of ‘Baul Philosophy’, the first comprehensive account introducing the spiritual tenets of the Baul tradition from an insider’s point of view.

Photos ~ Purna Das with Bob Dylan
~ Purna Das(right) with Mick Jagger(center)
~ Purna at 'Saama Festival'

"The Baul are a group of mystic minstrels from Bengal, which includes the Indian State of West Bengal and the country of Bangladesh; they are completely extinct there now. Bauls constitute both a syncretic religious sect and a musical tradition. Bauls are a very heterogeneous group, with many sects, but their membership mainly consists of Vaishnava Hindus and Sufi Muslims. They can often be identified by their distinctive clothes and musical instruments. Not much is known of their origin. Lalon Fokir is regarded as the most important poet-practitioner of the Baul tradition. Baul music had a great influence on Rabindranath Tagore's poetry and on his music (Rabindra Sangeet).

Although Bauls comprise only a small fraction of the Bengali population, their influence on the culture of Bengal is considerable. In 2005, the Baul tradition was included in the list of "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" by UNESCO." ~ Wikipedia


 "One day I chanced to hear a song from a beggar belonging to the Baul sect of Bengal...What struck me in this simple song was a religious expression that was neither grossly concrete, full of crude details, nor metaphysical in its rarefied transcendentalism. At the sametime it was alive with an emotional sincerity, it spoke of an intense yearning of the heart for the divine, which is in man and not in the temple or scriptures, in images or symbols... I sought to understand them through their songs, which is their only form of worship." ~ Rabindranath Tagore


  "The unknown Bird in the cage... how does it fly in and out? Catch it, I would, if I could... and put my mind's chains on its feet. There are eight rooms with nine doors, with latice-work in between. On top of that, there' s a central yard and a hall of mirrors. The unknown Bird in the cage... how does it fly in and out? The Bird wouldn't behave so, had it not been for my ill-luck. It has broken through its Cage and flown away somewhere.... The unknown Bird in the cage... how does it fly in and out? O Mind, you have lived with high hopes, but your Cage is made of raw bamboo. One day this Cage (too) will fall and break. Lalon says, "The door 's ajar, the Bird's flown!" The unknown Bird in the cage... how does it fly in and out? The unknown Bird in the cage... how does it fly in and out? Catch it, I would, if I could... and put my mind's chains on its feet." ~ Lalon was devoted to love, freedom and peace expressed in his songs. He taught the way of everlasting peace. Lalon Shah left no written copies of his songs, which were transmitted orally and only later transcribed by his followers. Kangal Harinath Majumdar (1833-1896) was his direct disciple. Rabindranath Tagore was also inspired by his songs and published some of them in the monthly Prabasi of Kolkata.

Lalon died at Chheuriya, at the age of 116 on 17 October 1890 as known.
Thousands of bauls and their followers together with the members of huge public come to the shrine (akkra bari) on the occasion of his death anniversary to pay homage to their great spiritual leader and stay there five continuous days and nights singing, praying which the bauls term as 'sadhu sheba' or service to saints."

Care

"If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to have a very loose relationship with this thing you call ‘I’ or ‘me. Maybe that whole thing in me around which the universe revolves isn’t so central!...

Maintaining access to his own humanity may be Mr. Erhard’s biggest project. Floating around the screen of another computer was the word “impeccability,” a reminder, he said, “to deal with whatever I touch with care.” If he learned his lesson the hard way, maybe there is no easy way.

Here’s how it is for me, When my integrity is lacking, I am clear that I just got to be a bit smaller as a person. And the thing you have to remember about integrity is it’s a mountain with no top.”

"The silver-haired man dressed like a waiter (dark vest, dark slacks) paced the aisle between rows of desks in a Toronto conference room. “If you’re going to be a leader, you’re going to have to have a very loose relationship with this thing you call ‘I’ or ‘me,’” he shouted. “Maybe that whole thing in me around which the universe revolves isn’t so central!” He paused to wipe his brow with a wad of paper towels. An assistant stood by with a microphone, but he waved her off. “Maybe life is not about the self but about self-transcendence! You got a problem with that?”

No one in the room had a problem with that. The desks were occupied by 27 name-tagged academics from around the world. And in the course of the day, a number of them would take the mike to pose what their instructor referred to as “yeah buts, how ’bouts or what ifs” in response to his pronouncements — but no one had a problem with them. In some ways, the three-day workshop, “Creating Class Leaders,” recalled an EST training session. As with that cultural touchstone of the 1970s, there was “sharing” and applause. There were confrontations and hugs. Gnomic declarations hovered in the air like mist: “We need to distinguish distinction”; “There’s no seeing, there’s only the seer”; “There isn’t any is.”

But the event was much more civilized than EST. There were bathroom breaks. No one was called an expletive by the teacher.

 

This is significant because the teacher was none other than the creator of EST, Werner Erhard.

Pound another nail into the coffin for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notion that there are no second acts in American lives.

“I am committed to the opposite of that idea,” Mr. Erhard said a few weeks after the leadership class in Toronto. “I don’t think there’s a person who walked out of that room who isn’t a second act.” To say nothing of their instructor, who, at age 80, may be more of a third or fourth act.

There was a time, boys and girls — the Me Decade, Tom Wolfe called it — when Mom and Dad wore mood rings, attended encounter groups and in general engaged in a tireless amount of navel gazing. If the so-called human potential movement had a single avatar, it was Werner Erhard.

EST (Latin for “is” and an acronym for Erhard Seminars Training) was equal parts Zen Buddhism and Dale Carnegie. Aspiring “ESTies” flocked to hotel ballrooms across the country for combative training sessions during which they forwent meal and bathroom breaks to take responsibility for their lives and “get it” by discovering there was nothing to get.

Diana Ross, Joe Namath, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin and several hundred thousand other seekers got it. Newsweek anointed Mr. Erhard “a celebrity guru who retails enlightenment.” There were doubters. To New Times magazine, he was “the king of the brain snatchers.”

The criticism intensified as EST grew. It was labeled a cult that practiced mind control (verbal abuse, sleep deprivation), a racket that exploited its followers (heavy recruiting, endless “graduate seminars”).

Much was made of Mr. Erhard’s tangled Don Draperish past: his days as a car salesman in Philadelphia, his dabbling in Mind Dynamics and Scientology, his desertion of his first wife and their four children to reinvent himself on the West Coast.

 

Mr. Erhard and Buckminster Fuller on stage at the 1979 event Making the World Work for Everyone. Credit Werner Erhard Foundation

Even his name was fake, lifted from an Esquire article he read on the plane to California. (“The Men Who Made the New Germany” included references to Ludwig Erhard, the minister of economics, and Werner Heisenberg, the atomic scientist.) Mr. Erhard was born Jack Rosenberg.

In 1985, he repackaged EST as the Forum, a kinder, gentler iteration of the training that was also more success-oriented. “In the ’80s, people started to think a little bit, and it was possible to use a less-confrontational style,” he said. But tax disputes, company lawsuits and an ugly divorce from his second wife kept Mr. Erhard in the news media cross hairs.

The flameout came in 1991. In March of that year, at the same time that I.R.S. officials were publicly accusing him of tax fraud, “60 Minutes” broadcast a report on Mr. Erhard that depicted him as an abusive father and husband who had sexually molested two daughters from his second marriage. Shortly before that show was televised, he sold the Forum to a group of employees, gave his Great Dane to a friend and fled the country.

“My reputation was destroyed by ‘60 Minutes,’” Mr. Erhard shouted between sips of Dragon Well Supreme green tea and a fistful of the pills he takes for various ailments. (He has no indoor voice — a professional hazard, perhaps.)

He had taken a suite at the London NYC hotel, where he had traveled with his Dutch-born third wife, Gonneke Spits, from Toronto to see friends, do a little business and visit his favorite chiropractor and tailor. He was also in the city to meet with a reporter — virtually the only press he has done in more than two decades.

“It was clear that I had to remove myself from the work, or the work was going to get very damaged,” Mr. Erhard said of his self-imposed exile.

But it was the Church of Scientology that actually drove him out of the country. According to Mr. Erhard, the “60 Minutes” allegations were the culmination of a smear campaign organized by Scientology officials to get back at him for poaching clients and ideas.

“There’s no question that I was declared fair game by L. Ron Hubbard,” he said. “In the doctrines of Scientology, that meant they could destroy me financially, socially or reputationally.”

This was a long time before the book (and the movie) “Going Clear” exposed some of the shadier practices of Scientology. But a 1991 article in The Los Angeles Times described how the church had indeed targeted Mr. Erhard as a “suppressive person,” hiring at least three private investigators to dig up dirt on him and pass it on to the news media. One of them, Alan Clow, said he shared his findings with “60 Minutes.”

As for the I.R.S., Mr. Erhard sued the agency (winning $200,000 in damages) for falsely claiming he had evaded taxes.

The daughter who had accused him of abuse later recanted, admitting she had lied to receive an advance on a book. And an article in The Believer stated that the “60 Minutes” segment was riddled with so many discrepancies that CBS deleted it from its public archives.

After leaving the country, Mr. Erhard settled in a friend’s apartment in Tokyo, with, he said, no more than “a pocketful of cash” to his name.

   

Mr. Erhard with the Dalai Lama in 1979. Credit Werner Erhard Foundation

He had kept the business rights to the Forum in Japan, and for several years, under the rubric of “mastery,” he conducted seminars for professionals coping with Japan’s financial crisis of the early 1990s. He also did some consulting work for Landmark, the Forum’s successor, run by his brother Harry Rosenberg.

In 1996, Mr. Erhard came down with a mysterious debilitating illness. A friend referred him to his doctor in the Cayman Islands, who ultimately diagnosed the Epstein-Barr virus. Mr. Erhard recovered on Grand Cayman, where he and Ms. Spits (a former EST executive) bought a villa in George Town, which remains their home base when they are not traveling.

For several years before his latest professional reincarnation, Mr. Erhard consulted for businesses and government agencies like the Russian adult-education program the Znaniye Society and a nonprofit organization supporting clergy in Ireland.

Enter the Harvard economist Michael Jensen. Dr. Jensen, who is famous in financial circles for championing the concepts of shareholder value and executive stock options, had taken a Landmark course in Boston at the suggestion of his daughter, who mended a rocky relationship with Dr. Jensen after taking the course herself.

“I became convinced we should work to get this kind of transformational material into the academies,” he said, adding that he considers Mr. Erhard “one of the great intellectuals of the century.”

In 2004, with the help of a Landmark official, Dr. Jensen developed an experiential course on integrity in leadership at the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester. The class was offered there for five years, with Mr. Erhard signing on as an instructor during its third year. It has since been taught at several universities around the world as well as at the United States Air Force Academy.

As far as its philosophical underpinnings go, Mr. Erhard struggled a bit to describe the course without resorting to its Delphic phraseology (“ontological pedagogy,” “action as a correlate of the occurring”).

Sitting in front of a bank of computers in his hotel room, he read excerpts from the 1,000-page textbook he is working on, such as: “As linguistic abstractions, leader and leadership create leader and leadership as realms of possibility in which, when you are being a leader, all possible ways of being are available to you.”

Briefly, the course, which owes ideological debts to the Forum and to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, takes an experience-based, rather than knowledge-based, approach to its subject. Students master principles like integrity and authenticity in order to leave the class acting as leaders instead of merely knowing about leadership.

Its promoters believe the course has broader applications both within and outside of academia. “They should take it to government,” said Paul Fireman, the former chairman and C.E.O. of Reebok, who has consulted with Mr. Erhard on his recent work. (Mr. Fireman says that Reebok’s stock price jumped “from the $6 or $7 range to the $25 to $30 range” after he introduced his employees to the Landmark training.)

Landmark, for which Mr. Erhard continues to help develop new programs, is far more mainstream than EST ever became. Currently, according to Harry Rosenberg, 130,000 people a year participate in its offerings, which are available on every continent except Antarctica. It has a stronger corporate presence than EST or the Forum; in addition to Reebok, clients include Microsoft, NASA and Lululemon.

Still, Mr. Erhard’s emphasis on personal responsibility, on being rather than knowing, is embedded in the Landmark workshops. “All of the Landmark programs are based on the ideas and methodology that Werner developed,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “The basic intent has not changed.”

Photo

Werner Erhard in Hampstead, London. In the 1970s Mr. Erhard created Erhard Seminars Training, which taught strategies for self-actualization in workshops that could turn combative. Credit Tom Jamieson for The New York Times

In fact, Mr. Erhard casts a fairly long shadow in the culture at large. His influence, wrote Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times, “extends far beyond the couple of million people who have done his courses: there is hardly a self-help book or a management training programme that does not borrow some of his principles.”

Whether that’s a good thing or not probably depends on one’s attitude toward such books and programs.

“Erhard made palatable the notion that the end justifies the means,” said Steve Salerno, the author of “Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.” “Which is partly responsible for the climate of what I call happyism. If your happiness is all that matters, anybody who stands in the way becomes detritus in the ruthless pursuit of individual perfection.”

Criticism of this sort does not faze Mr. Erhard. Certainly, he’s weathered worse.

In his ninth decade, he is consumed with his latest mission, putting in 10-hour days lecturing and teaching three courses a year in addition to completing the textbook.

His recent health challenges include a battle with septicemia that left him having to learn to walk again (a timer in his suite reminded him to stroll around every half-hour), but he still works six days a week.

While he writes, he listens to music: Renée Fleming, the Serbian composer Stevan Mokranjac, Sérgio Mendes. “You’re going to get a kick out of this,” he said, scrolling through the playlist on one of his computers. “Gonneke! Where’s ‘Brasileiro’ on here?”

His wife, a stylish platinum-haired woman whom Mr. Erhard leans on to negotiate the more mundane demands of life, helped him find the album by Mr. Mendes in question. The surdo-drum thumping of a batucada band filled the room.

In their downtime, the couple likes to travel. Tokyo, Amsterdam and London are favorite places, along with Hawaii and the West Coast, where Mr. Erhard’s seven children live. He now enjoys a very strong relationship with four of them, he said, and a good relationship with the other three.

He also has 11 grandchildren, and one of his current preoccupations is the numbing effects of digital technology on millennials. Warming to the subject, he read aloud another passage, this one from a dense Heidegger essay calling for a “comportment toward technology which expresses yes and at the same time no.”

”The cost to this generation is enormous,” Mr. Erhard said. “They are losing access to their humanity.”

Maintaining access to his own humanity may be Mr. Erhard’s biggest project. Floating around the screen of another computer was the word “impeccability,” a reminder, he said, “to deal with whatever I touch with care.” If he learned his lesson the hard way, maybe there is no easy way.

“Here’s how it is for me,” Mr. Erhard said, leaning in, giving his vocal cords a break. “When my integrity is lacking, I am clear that I just got to be a bit smaller as a person. And the thing you have to remember about integrity is it’s a mountain with no top.”

The clock chimed. He stood and stretched. Time for another few laps around the room.

Power of Love

“… In my personal life I'm a very traditional Chinese person, and when you promise a girl something you need to do it. Also, in a lot of Asian audiences, and probably American too, the man wants to see the action movie, he's begging the girl to go see an action movie. But this time, I really want the girl to say, come on man, let's go see the movie. Because, remember your promise. I think the man needs to be honest, take a little responsibility. Whatever you do. That's my personal thought...

I am a parent, I have a daughter fourteen months old, sometimes I walk with her in the mall and I see a lot of kids three years old, five years old, they say "hey, Jet Li, kungfu, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah!" So, I suddenly think, uh oh, maybe I need to take some responsibility to answer that. I'm a father too. I say, I want to remind you, this is an art movie, for adults. You need to take the responsibility also because you need to decide how old your children are, and what to do. Maybe you watch it yourself, see the movie first, and see is it too violent, too hardcore, don't take your children. Every parent, they need to take the responsibility also.

You cannot make one film and make everybody happy. You make a PG movie, and your hardcore fans say, it's too soft. But in this film, I really want to talk about some message through this film. It really depends on what’s your focus. Next year I've decided to do a situation comedy...

Ten years ago I promised my wife… if we have a baby I'll stop my working, and be with you until the baby is born… You can always create a good movie, but your life; you take care of your baby or wife. In your whole life you can find a lot of successful scripts, work with successful people. But in life, you need to really take responsibility to your family. And I thought that was more important than the movie...

When I was seventeen I made my first film, called The Shaolin Temple. I was already successful in all of Asia, wherever I went everybody knew me. Sometimes you feel at peace, sometimes you want to be alone. But right now I become Buddhist, and I study Buddhism. It's a good thing if you can make people happy, whether they're a little boy or an adult. When they see you they are so happy, they smile, you will be proud. If I can make them happy, I can spend more time talking with them in the mall, wherever I go, that's fine…

I think you really need to understand American culture, because everybody you meet says very nice things to you - you are great, you are brilliant, you’re amazing - I want to know is this true, or are they being polite? I really want to know, so I make my website to talk to the audience. They tell me the truth, they say, I like you in this, I don't like you in this. It's important. Because American people are so polite...

Richard Nixon asked me after I did a Kung Fu demonstration, ‘do you want to become my bodyguard when you grow up?’ I say, ‘nope. I don't want to protect one person, I want to protect a billion people.’... When I was working in Shaolin there were no monks, only 3 monks, and they had just finished the Cultural Revolution. Not a lot of people knew about the Shaolin Temple. After the movie came out it became very popular. A lot of tourists, a lot of martial arts schools. Remember, I'm just a normal guy, I'm lucky, learning martial arts. Now I’m lucky making films. One day I will retire. Just lucky.

I remember when I was young, I really wanted to promote martial arts. In the 1970s I already had traveled to different countries, doing demonstrations. In the 1980s I started by making one movie. My eyes just opened. I saw a lot of people watching the movie, and they started liking the martial arts. Then I said, why not just continue making movies, and through the movies give out more information. I really want the martial arts to help the people…

I'm not a good director. But I did produce nine movies in Hong Kong, and this I would like to do. I like to come up with a good story, and find a good writer to write it. Then you get the right people. Nobody can do everything. For action movies, you can use martial arts to talk about love, maybe use martial arts to talk about what kind person you can call a hero. Through different kinds of angles you can see martial arts. I think when you talk about religion, Buddhism is one kind of religion, and when you talk about religion you study it because you want to study what kind of person you are …

You can't just teach teenagers what is right, what is wrong. I want to share with them, and let them choose what is good or bad. But a movie is only two hours, you cannot talk about a lot of ideas in one film. I just finished a TV show called The Invincible, and it focused on people needing to work together, they need to help each other. When you’re angry at somebody, even when you punch somebody, the bad energy comes out, you make that person become bad. If you love him first, you want to change him. Even the movement, the love energy comes out. So you want to talk about a different way, different levels. In the beginning, first, you say here's martial art, and they say, Oh, I'm interested in martial arts because you can kick somebody's ass. But then you want to talk about more. I will make another film that talks about a monk in NY, a monk from Tibet that goes to NY. It's more focused on the next level...

The television show talks about a different angle to see the martial arts. It's a similar thing with the gun. The bad guy uses a gun to become bad. The good guy uses a gun to become good. The martial art, physical movement doesn't represent anything. You represent how to use the martial art. If you can use it to help people understand, then it's better...

The outside always changes, the studios, the producers. But you have to think about it. You have to think about the situation outside your body. You think they’re tough, they're tough. If you think it’s easy, it's easy. It really depends on what's your point of view. What you want to get. You want to get famous? You want to become rich? What do you want to get? If I think, I only want to work, do my best, that's it. You give me more money, more fame, it's OK. You don’t give it to me, I go home. That's very easy. Just relax. Enjoy life. Do your best.” ~ Kung Fu Magazine

His Holiness Karmapa received a visit from actor Jet Li. Li was an internationally renowned Wu Shu champion of China as a teenager, and has appeared in some 30 movies.

~ “Jet Li (born Li Lianjie) is a Chinese film actor, film producer, martial artist, and retired Wushu champion who was born in Beijing. He is a naturalized Singaporean citizen. Li is a practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. His master is Lho Kunsang. In 1987, Li married Huang Qiuyan, with whom he has two daughters. They divorced in 1990. Since 1999, he has been married to Nina Li Chi (born Li Zhi), a Shanghai-born, Hong Kong-based actress. He has two daughters with her also.

According to Li, everything he has ever wanted to tell the world can be found in three of his films: the message of ‘Hero’ is that the suffering of one person can never be as significant as the suffering of a nation; ‘Unleashed’ shows that violence is never a solution; and ‘Fearless’ tells that the biggest enemy of a person is himself. Li thinks that the greatest weapon is a smile and the largest power is love.

Li said that he believes the essence of martial arts is not power or speed but inner harmony… Li believes that Wushu is not primarily for self-defense and instead of trying to play the hero. ‘People should think about peaceful resolutions of conflicts and call the police if necessary. A gun outdoes years of martial arts training in a split second. Like I've said many times before, it is important to differentiate between movies and reality. The hero in movies may be able to knock the gun off his opponent and save the day, but in real life – probably that is not the case.’ He has also stated that he has never had to use his martial arts skills in a real life fight and he does not wish to, either.” ~ Wikipedia

 “… Jet had been educated to think: "China is good. Everything in China is good." and "The Western countries are decadent societies. Everything about America is evil." When he actually found himself walking around in this Western country however, he couldn't help but notice how different everything was from China -- and not necessarily in a bad way. None of the students dared say the words -- "Hey, it's pretty nice here!" -- but everybody was thinking it...................................................................................................................................... 

                                                                                                                                     
The last stop and climax of their U.S. tour was Washington D.C., where a select few from their team performed their wushu routines on the White House lawn. After the performance, they were introduced to the American dignitaries and posed with them for official pictures. As Jet remembers, President Richard Nixon stood with one of his female teammates, and Jet stood next to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. At one point, Nixon turned towards him and said, "Young man, your kung fu is very impressive! How about being our bodyguard when you grow up?"...............................

 "No, " Jet blurted out. "I don't want to protect any individual. When I grow up, I want to defend my one billion Chinese countrymen!"
People were stunned. There was an uncomfortable silence. Nobody had expected him to give that kind of an answer-least of all Jet. Kissinger was the one who finally broke the silence. "Heavens, such a young boy and he already speaks like a diplomat!" It wasn't until a few days later, when they were wrapping up their visit in the States with a dinner at the embassy that somebody showed them that their visit to the White House had made the New York Times, complete with picture and headline. The article described the entire exchange, and went on to wonder what kind of educational methods they were using in Red China if even the youngest representatives were trained to reply with such nationalist fervor.............................................................. 

 The Chinese government, naturally, had no problems with the answer Jet had given President Nixon. They praised him highly. What a clever boy to give such a patriotic answer! Once again, he'd earned a perfect score.............................................................

Everybody's main focus was the National Games, which were being held in Beijing… The very first move he made was an accident. He sliced himself with his broadsword and cut a big gash on the side of his head. Funny thing was, he had no idea... His head felt very warm and wet, and he seemed to be perspiring heavily. The more he jumped and kicked, the more he seemed to sweat. Drops were running into his eyes, flying everywhere. “How strange,” he thought. 

 From a very young age, it had been drilled into him that he could not use physical pain as an excuse to affect his performance. Not even a broken bone could justify it - and under that logic, a little blood was no reason at all. The drive to continue performing was automatic. Years of inflexible training builds will; when you're truly tested, it serves you well. On the other hand, if you are always allowed to stop training whenever you feel discomfort, you will find it too easy to give yourself permission to quit. 

 So he finished his form, saluted, and ran off the platform. Three or four of his female teammates were standing there, and they were all crying. Somebody clapped a towel on his head. When he looked down, he saw that half of his uniform had been dyed red with blood. He was crimson from the shoulder down to the pant leg. When he saw all that blood, he let out a surprised little yelp. Almost fainted! They rushed him to the hospital, where he got stitched up. Then they took him back to the sports school to recuperate. His coaches told him that the final round was coming up in three days. But the doctor had warned him that under no circumstances could the stitches be removed before a full week had passed........................................................... 

 The day of the competition arrived. The doctor asked if they planned to keep his bandages on during his performance? No, he couldn't do that - it would affect his balance. Did he want to forfeit the competition? No, he didn't want to do that either. So he wore his bandages all the way to the competition arena. When he arrived, everybody was watching him very carefully........................................................................ 

 At this point, the lessons he had learned three years earlier from training on the broken ankle served him well. He focused deep down. Nothing mattered except his form.
He walked up to the platform and ripped off the bandage. A nurse was standing by with disinfectant and a syringe. "Immediately after you finish," she told him, "come over here so he can clean your wound and cover it up again." The cut hadn't healed yet, and they were all afraid that the exposure to sweat and dirt might get it infected. Sure enough, as soon as he finished the form, he ran down, pulled down his pants to get an injection, then let the nurse sponge and re-bandage him! 

 His winning first place caused quite a sensation, because he was so young. He was only 12 years old, and the other two medalists were in their mid- to late twenties. During the awards ceremony, as he stood on the top step of the podium, he was still shorter than the 2nd and 3rd place medalists. It must have been quite a sight. The national anthem began to play. As he stood there, listening, he began to feel overcome with emotion. He hadn't really realized the impact of winning a national title the year before, when he was 11. This time, though, he suddenly wanted to start crying................. 

 "This medal is for you, mom! You didn't raise me in vain! Without your sacrifices, I couldn't have made it to this point!" he thought. The events of the last few days - the injury, his mom's reaction, competing against the adults - all started swimming in the ocean of his mind, and his eyes filled with tears. Jet says he doesn’t remember ever feeling that way again, standing on a podium, but he certainly did that time................................. 

 He won a total of five gold medals in the national championships for 5 consecutive years, from 1974 to 1979. In 1979, Li received his highest achievement in martial arts when he was crowned Gold Champion at the Chinese National Martial Arts Competition. To this date no other man has won more titles. During this stage of his life, he acquired the nickname "Jet" for his blazing speed.”

 "Fearless is not the overblown action spectacle that some of the advertisements would lead you to believe. This is definitely a plot-driven movie with a genuine message and a purpose. While the film may be a bit heavy handed and melodramatic in delivering this message at times, it nonetheless remains strong because the characters are easy to relate to and are likeable. Jet Li is able to play both sides of his character (the brash and arrogant young man that he is in the beginning, and the much wiser and understanding man he becomes half way through) with a sense of believability, making him a character that is easy for the audience to get behind."

Laundry

"The life of our community was simple and sane, and I threw myself into it with all my love and energy. I did this with all the skill of a very strongly formed and defended personality. Deep prayer and meditation experiences sustained me for a long time. After some years I felt I could trust the community, so I rested for a breather. Around this time, one of the older sisters died. I had been close to her, and it triggered a succession of memories: the death of my twin brother at our birth, the near-death of my mother, the distance, hatred, and loss of my father. I realized how split off my life had been because of my sorrow. I saw that even in the monastic community I had lived on the surface, had been running from the grief and emptiness. I finally stopped. That realization started years of healing work to find the place where the grief, the monastery, the pain of my own life, and the pain of the world could be held in the same sacred heart."

"When I came back it was as if my 12 years of experiences in India and Tibet were a dream. The memory and value of those transcendental experiences was in some way a dream challenged by the culture shock of returning to my family and to work in the West. Old patterns came back surprisingly quickly. I got irritable, confused. I wasn't taking care of my body, I worried about money, about relationship. At the worst point I feared that I was losing what I had learned. Then I realized I couldn't live in some enlightened memory. What became clear is that spiritual practice is only what you're doing now. Anything else is a fantasy."

‘A clearly enlightened person falls in the well. How is this so? After any powerful spiritual experience, there is an inevitable descent, a struggle to embody what we have seen.’ The well we fall into can be created by clinging to our experience and spiritual ideals or by holding inflated ideas about our teachers, our path, or our self. The well can be the unfinished business of our psychological and emotional life--an unwillingness to acknowledge our own shadow, to include the human needs, the pain, and the darkness that we carry, to see that we always have one foot in the dark. As bright as it is, the universe also needs us to open to its other side.”

~ From "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path"
by Jack Kornfield.

“Enlightenment does exist... Unbounded freedom and joy, oneness with the divine ... these experiences are more common than you know, and not far away.”                                                                                                                                 

Liberation

“It's tapping into a waiting reservoir of inherent racism… When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that’s a violation of basic human rights.” ~ Jimmy Carter

My recent posts about racism have been some of my least popular. I don’t believe this is because my friends are racists. It is uncomfortable for us to read and listen to painful things. It’s easy to assume I have a good heart so I don’t need to listen to where someone else is coming from. Not too long ago I would have passed by messages like this. I didn't know what to say. Now I know, listening and learning is what I need. Sharing it with others makes me accountable. I am committed to opening my heart and waking up. May we all be free... as little children. Another dead white man…

“William Blake was an engraver who had a calling as a divinely inspired poet and prophet. A passionate believer in racial and sexual equality, Blake used his poetry and art to protest against many different forms of mental, physical and economic enslavement. He also created several memorable and specific anti-slavery and pro-abolition images. Blake's images are sometimes disturbing and show the cruel punishments meted out by white plantation owners.

The Dutch captured the British colony of Suriname during the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1667). Under the West India Company it was developed as a plantation slave society and became a primary destination for the Dutch slave trade. The brutal regime caused high mortality; despite the import of 300,000 slaves between 1668 and 1823, the population never grew beyond 50,000. ‘Maroonage’ became the major form of resistance. Fugitive slaves, or ‘maroons’, escaped inland to form permanent communities from where they waged a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the Dutch.

In 1774 the Scottish-Dutch soldier John Gabriel Stedman witnessed the brutal oppression of slaves during a campaign against the maroons, which he described in his Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam. The book included illustrations by William Blake. One of the illustrations is ‘Europe supported by Africa and America’. This allegorical image is in the tradition of ‘The Four Continents’, in which the continents are depicted as female figures. Blake, the abolitionist, has included gold arm bands on the arms of Africa and America to symbolize their enslavement to the central figure of Europe. However, the fact that Europe is being physically supported by her companions suggests the possibility of a more equitable relationship.

Another engraving, 'A negro hung alive by the ribs to a gallows' (Violent image removed from Facebook) shows a man brutally hung up, while still alive, by a hook through his body. In his account he describes the plants and animals he encountered, as well as how runaway slaves who had been recaptured were tortured. The image depicts what would happen after major rebellion by the enslaved. Many of the images used in Stedman's account were developed from his sketches by William Blake. This engraving became one of most widely reproduced pieces of anti-slavery art.”

 "Blake's engravings for Stedman are horrifying - brutal whippings, torture and hangings - but they are based on other people's drawings...

That Stedman commissioned Blake speaks of his exceptional radicalism and it is hard to think of another contemporary artist for the job. Anti-slavery paintings by George Morland were shown at the Royal Academy in 1788 and Tate Britain will be exhibiting George Romney's dark and knotted drawings of prisons. But aside from its notorious ground plan of a slave ship, every inch jammed with bodies, the abolition movement simply had no images to work with the way it had words. And Tate Britain makes an apt point of reproducing the great tracts, poems and sermons.

But slavery, for Blake, is also a state of mind. His ringing phrase, 'Mind-forg'd manacles', is from the poem 'London', in which the material life of the city is seen to be crushing the spirit. In 'Visions of the Daughters of Albion', Blake is against the slavery of marriage. He rants against the bosses as mental slaves, mourns the slavery of experience over childhood innocence. Above all, bondage and liberation are Blake's great visual themes, and his lexicon of bodies shackled and free is like no other in art. Blake created the greatest metaphors for slavery and liberation. His figures are timeless, and their context, alas, eternal. To see them is to be plunged into a dungeon or taken out of yourself into a liberated world." ~ Laura Cumming, The Guardian

Nicole Rodgers writes, "All white people have to do is acknowledge how slavery still affects african americans negatively today. We don't need lectures about how y'all shouldn't be held accountable for the sins of your ancestors. Just some acknowledgement. It's just that simple. Put your ego to the side and say: Wow that was f**ked up. I see why you guys feel some kind of way. I can't change the past, but as far as the future goes, I can try to use my privilege to right the wrongs that were done. That's it. That's all."

Your point of view is interesting to me if I can learn and expand my understanding. All I ask is that those of us in the privileged majority listen to disadvantaged folks; not cause we're so good but because we're all better off if we have a human feeling for each other. An open heart trumps a closed mind - no matter what the content. I care about history but I care more about being open to the next soul I meet... She might hold the key to the liberation of us all.

Mad with Truth

A YOGI OF BROKEN DREAMS

Don't worship a bearded man in the sky, or a graven image in a book. Worship the in-breath and the out-breath, the winter breeze caressing your face, the morning rush on the Underground, the simple feeling of being alive, never knowing what is to come. See God in the eyes of a stranger, Heaven in the broken and the ordinary. Worship the ground on which you stand. Make each day a dance, with tears in your eyes, as you behold the divine in every moment, see the absolute in all things relative, and let them call you crazy. Let them laugh and point. You are a yogi of traffic jams and discarded apple cores, aloneness and impossibly blue winter skies, a yogi of broken dreams, mad with truth and devotion and inexplicable joy, and you cannot be saved now.

- Jeff Foster

Lotus

The Lotus Temple, located in Delhi, India, is completed in 1986. Notable for its Lotus flower shape, it has become a prominent attraction in the city. Like all Houses of Worship, the Lotus Temple is open to all. The sacred writings of not only the Bahá'í Faith but also other religions can be read and/or chanted, regardless of language. The architect was an Iranian, who now lives in Canada, named Fariborz Sahba. Open to people of all faiths, the white-marble temple can hold up to 2,500 people in its domed interior and has even surpassed the Taj Mahal in annual visitors.

The Bahá'í Faith teaches that a Bahá'í House of Worship should be a space for people of all religions to gather, reflect, and worship. Anyone may enter the Lotus Temple irrespective of religious background, sex, or other distinctions, as is the case with all Bahá'í Houses of Worship. The sacred writings of not only the Bahá'í Faith but also other religions can be read and/or chanted, regardless of language; on the other hand, reading non-scriptural texts is forbidden, as are delivering sermons or lectures and fundraising. Musical renditions of readings and prayers can be sung by choirs but no musical instruments can be played inside. There is no set pattern for worship services, and ritualistic ceremonies are not permitted.

Interior view

Interior view of the symbol of the Greatest Name, set at the top of the temple

Lotus Temple at sunset

View of the Bahá'í House of Worship at night

All Bahá'í Houses of Worship, including the Lotus Temple, share certain architectural elements, some of which are specified by Bahá'í scripture. `Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of the founder of the religion, stipulated that an essential architectural character of a House of Worship is a nine sided circular shape. While all current Bahá'í Houses of Worship have a dome, this is not regarded as an essential part of their architecture. Bahá'í scripture also states that no pictures, statues or images be displayed within the House of Worship and no pulpits or altars be incorporated as an architectural feature (readers may stand behind simple portable lecture stands).

Model of the temple at the information centre

Inspired by the lotus flower, the design for the House of Worship in New Delhi is composed of 27 free-standing marble-clad "petals" arranged in clusters of three to form nine sides. The nine doors of the Lotus Temple open onto a central hall slightly more than 40 metres tall that can seat 1,300 people and hold up to 2,500 in all.The surface of the House of Worship is made of white marble from Penteli mountain in Greece, the same marble from which many ancient monuments (including the Parthenon) and other Bahá'í Houses of Worship are built. Along with its nine surrounding ponds and the gardens, the Lotus Temple property comprises 26 acres (105,000 m²; 10.5 ha).
Lotus mandir is situated near Nehru Place near Kalkaji and Kalkaji Mandir Metro station is the near metro station. It is just 500 meters away from the mandir.
The temple is in the village of Bahapur in New Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi. The architect was an Iranian, who now lives in Canada, named Fariborz Sahba. He was approached in 1976 to design it and later oversaw its construction. The structural design was undertaken by the UK firm Flint and Neill over the course of 18 months, and the construction was done by ECC Construction Group of Larsen & Toubro Limited. The major part of the funds needed to buy this land was donated by Ardishír Rustampúr of Hyderabad, Sindh, who gave his entire life savings for this purpose in 1953. A portion of the construction budget was saved and used to build a greenhouse to study indigenous plants and flowers that would be appropriate for use on the site.
Of the temple's total electricity use of 500 kilowatts (KW), 120KW is provided by solar power generated by the building. This saves the temple 120,000 rupees per month. It is the first temple in Delhi to use solar power.